> It will show you things that are hot and cold.
I figured that much
> It won't show small temperature differences very well.
What is small?
I found a video here:
where the host compares some < 1500€ cameras including the seek.
At the end there is a compaction list he say that that booth the seek and the flir one can resolve temp differences of about 0.4 °C
> It won't give very accurate temperature measurements -- at least, my first-generation SeeK dongle doesn't.
Yea the guy noticed that as well.
Supposedly the flir one head an error of +2% at 50°C and +1.6% at 120 °C
while the seek head an error of -8.7% at 50°C and -5.3% at 120°C as well as -4.9% at 350°C
The reveal had an error of 0 at 120°C but the other cases ware comparable so I guess that was a coincidence.
I think for me the absolute value is not so important if I want to measure a spot exactly I can use something else, sooting differences, hotspots, overall temperature distribution is more interesting.
> What do you want to do with it?
Once you got a hammer every problem looks like a nail
No but seriously:
1) I think what I'll be doing first is check my breaker box if something is running hot, may be check other parts of my electrical installation
2) I surly will look for thermal leaks in my house, a.k.a. where to fix some isolation etc.
3) I may possibly want to use it when playing around with my 3d printer since i added a heated enclosure I would like to see the temp distribution around the extruder. I noticed sometimes that the filament gets stuck as apparently its getting to soft for the motor to push it. So at this point some improved thermal barrier will be needed.
4) Looking on PCB's if/where they are running hot, I can imagine that may be quite useful like for finding failed tantal caps, etc...
5) Finding other problems i can solve with a thermal cam.
> For that matter, how long do you expect to keep your smartphone before upgrading to one that does support USB host?
One or two years at least, its not even two years old now.
And I really don't see any reason to switch it, it has a replaceable battery, and still more CPU power and Memory that I need right now.
Also Its a rather expensive tool, and if its smartphoen based its not guaranteed to work forever once the manufacture goes out of busyness (no app updates). Well one option would be to get a cheep compatible phoen for this purpose only install the app make a flash backup and keep it offlien forever